Page 42 - Arabian Studies (II)

32 Arabian Studies If
speech to them, and holds meetings. Ibn Saud habitually wrote
letters to the rulers of Muslim countries at the end of the Pilgrimage.
The influence of the Ruler of Mecca can be great, for good or ill, in
the Islamic world. Remember Britain’s situation in 1940, when we
were alone and rather unready, or even later when the Germans
nearly advanced into Egypt. There was no longer a Caliph of Islam,
and the nearest person to that position was Ibn Saud. Yet had lbn
Saud not been Ibn Saud but another man in that position and
declared, say in the time of the pilgrimage in the early spring of
1940, that all good Muslims in his view should take up arms against
Britain, we should have needed two or three more army corps which
we did not possess. We had a narrow escape, thanks to Ibn Saud, who
had only once been outside Arabia, to Basra at the end of the First
War, and whose only other visit abroad was at the end of the Second
War when he was invited by President Roosevelt and Winston
Churchill to meet them in Egypt on their way back from Russia. We
can understand why they felt pleased to meet him. They were two
exceptionally great men and Ibn Saud was in the same rank.